My Big Fat Tongan Funeral

You've heard of the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"?  Well, we had "My Big Fat Tongan Funeral" last week.  A wonderful man in our ward passed away and he was born and raised in Tonga.  So we had a Tongan funeral, which was fascinating.  If you want to know what they did, here is the Wikipedia entry for "tongan funerals": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongan_funerals

Anyway, I was asked by the Bishop to arrange the luncheon after the funeral.  We talked about how they would have a lot of people coming for the funeral but I had no idea how large it would be until I talked to the family.  We needed to feed 300 people! The family was awesome and pitched in half of it (and their food was really good!) but it was a huge production getting all the food, cooking all the food, setting up tables after the funeral but before the luncheon, and then serving.  It was just like a ward party.  But everything went great and the people who helped were amazing.  I am very blessed to have so many people willing to help.

After the luncheon, the Deacons came up to help clean up.  They put away chairs, tables, vacuumed the Church, and ate leftovers (including guava cake which is really good).  I took a picture of the Deacons as proof that they worked hard!